Media Releases

Job Seekers Offered Navigating the Workplace Training

People looking for a job need to know lots of things both while they're looking and after they land that position that will yield a paycheck.

New Mexico Junior College will offer as a gift to job seekers, a two-day course called Navigating the Workplace Wednesday and Thursday, from 8-5 p.m. at the NMJC Larry Hannah Training & Outreach Center on West Millen near the college campus.Rachel Gallagher, support technician for programs at the Hannah Training Center, said the two-day program will include resumé preparation.

"Resumés are really important," Gallagher said. "People may have a lot of experience and marketable skills, but not know how to get those things into a resumé. This course will help them do that."

Interview skills are also important, Gallagher said.

"People need to know how to dress, how to answer and ask questions. And for this part of the course, there will be some one-on-one preparation," Gallagher said.

Included in the course is a segment on do's and don'ts of social media, an area that some job seekers seem not to understand can have a lasting and profound effect on their employability. Gallagher said part of the training will be on social skills in the workplace.

"There are some subjects that are not or should not be part of discussions in the workplace," Gallagher said. "People need to know what they are."

Other critically important skills, including how to use Microsoft Word and Excel are also components of the two day class.Navigating the Workplace is a program the college is able to offer free of charge because NMJC received a $2.5 million Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Training Grant from the United States Department of Labor in 2013. "We are reaching out to veterans, to people displaced by downsizing, for people who worked at Intrepid and lost their jobs, basically to the unemployed or to people who are employed but who want to increase their skills," Gallagher said.

Monday several people were busy in the training center labs using equipment available to help them either learn or improve their skills. Gordon Seaman, who is a pilot for URENCO, said he is learning motor controls.

"Whatever there is to know about control circuits," Seaman said. "When things are a little slow, I come out here to learn to put some practical knowledge with my degree in electrical engineering."

Mark Sterling and Joshua Owens were learning to use hydraulic controls.

"You can lift a lot more with a lot less energy using hydraulic power than with electric power," Sterling said.

"Hydraulic power lifts a lot of things, including the garbage on the garbage trucks," Owens said.

Courses available soon at the training center include Instrumentation, Dec. 19-21; CDL, two week course, Jan. 9-20, and one week course, Jan. 23-27; lease pumper, Jan. 30-Feb.10; and PLC training on dates to be announced in January. To register on-line for Navigating the Workplace, go to goo.gl/S0BuKZ or for more information about any of the courses offered at the workplace center call 575-492-4716 or email rgallagher@nmjc.edu.